Does the wierd increase in jellyfish populations mark a watershed in global warming, or is it just strange coincidence?

Jellyfish found in WiganFirst it was Bitterns, rucks of roe deer, then an occasional wild boar. Now thousands of tiny, transparent exotic visitors have travelled half way around the world to sample life here in Wigan!

The amazing 10p-sized creatures are Amazonian freshwater jellyfish – a familiar sight pulsating in the world’s biggest river system winding through South America – but rarer than rocking-horse molars in Britain.

“There’s no doubt that the very warm weather is a big factor because, by all accounts, they need still water with a temperature approaching 25 degrees centigrade to feed and grow, but soon die off, possibly unseen, when it drops much below this.

Sweltering temperatures sweeping Europe have brought a plague of jellyfish to Spain’s eastern seashores, forcing holidaymakers to stay out of the sea, the Red Cross said on Thursday. The unwelcome visitors, which can reach the size of a dinner plate, have flourished thanks to a glut of plankton brought on by higher sea temperatures and a decline in natural predators like dolphins and turtles.

Strange jellyfish blooms are not the only harbingers of a shift in ocean ecology beyond water temperature.

Beaches from Rome to Genoa are deserted, despite an unrelenting heat wave, because of a plague of poisonous algae that can turn even the sea breeze toxic.Silvio Greco, a government marine scientist, said that warmer currents in the Tyrrhenian Sea were to blame. Some bathers have also been treated for jellyfish stings. Antonio Di Natale, the chief marine biologist at the Genoa Aquarium, said that the jellyfish and toxic algae were the result of warm currents from North Africa, with Italian coastal temperatures reaching nearly 30C (86F) in some cases

This is not only a European phenomenon.

With the vacation season in full swing, Haeundae beach in Busan is seeing a daily average of 800,000 vacationers. But people are not the only species drawn to the nation’s top beach: jellyfish are also drifting in and out of the area, leaving plenty of victims in their wake.Lifeguards at Haeundae said Tuesday that on the previous day emergency treatment was administered to some 20 people who had been stung while playing in the water. The day before 10 reportedly suffered a similar fate. Jellyfish spread from the southern coast to the east coast in summer when water temperature goes up. In the process, they often appear in beaches near Busan.

Some already see it as a harbinger of bad tidings.

Critics of the fishing industry have long predicted that if over-fishing continues for much longer, “junk species” like jellyfish will start filling up the vacancies.

Until recently, there was no evidence that the prediction would come true. But along the coast of Southern Africa, famously productive fisheries have crashed in recent years. In a new paper, English scientists say the spot on the food chain long occupied by these fish has now been filled by the largest jellyfish boom ever measured.

These jellyfish are said to be so dense that they cause trawling nets to burst at the seams.

Of course, Fox News found a report that says this is a good thing.

Swarms of lowly thumb-sized ocean creatures that often resemble chains of transparent Gummy Bears play a critical role in transporting a greenhouse gas deep into the deep sea, scientists report.

The semi-transparent barrel-shaped creatures, called salps, emerge by the billions in groups that occupy as much as 38,600 square miles of the sea surface (about the size of the state of Indiana), Laurence Madin of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution wrote in a newly published study.

So is this a cyclic situation that means nothing, or is this proof of potentially deadly changes in our oceans?

Will we have to learn how to cook jellyfish?